DSM-IV-TR Criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD)
Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) is listed in the DSM-IV-TR as a "Cluster A" (odd or eccentric) Personality Disorder.
Text in Bold Italics is quoted from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-IV)
Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) is defined as:
a pervasive distrust and suspicion of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
Suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her.
Is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates.
Is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her.
Reads benign remarks or events as threatening or demeaning.
Persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights.
Perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack.
Has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner.
The traits, behaviors and characteristics
Do not occur exclusively during the course of a mood disorder accompanied by psychotic features nor other psychotic disorders.
Are not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.
A formal diagnosis of PPD requires a mental health professional to identify 4 out of the above 7 criteria as positive. Some people with PPD may exhibit all 7, most will exhibit only a few.
Nobody’s perfect. Even normal healthy people will experience or exhibit a few of the above criteria from time to time. This does not make a person PPD.
Understanding the clinical criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) is helpful but learning how to cope with having a loved-one who suffers from PPD is quite different and is not covered in any psychological manual.
One of the most effective ways we have found to deal with that is to get support from people who understand what it feels like to be in a relationship or be a family member of someone who suffers from a personality disorder and have learned how to cope. You can find people like that at our Support Forum.
Feb 10, 2010 - The American Psychiatric Association today released their first draft of the 5th revision of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-V) which regroups personality disorder diagnoses into 5 categories:
Antisocial/Psychopathic Type
Avoidant Type
Borderline Type
Obsessive-Compulsive Type
Schizotypal Type
There is also a proposed mechanism for scoring the severity and the match of each of the diagnostic traits.
The proposals are not final and the APA has a comment period starting today and ending April 20th 2010. The DSM-V is scheduled for release in May 2013.
Dec 30 2009 - Those of you who use the "stay logged in" feature of the Out of the FOG support forum will notice that you unexpectedly had to log in again today. Please don't be alarmed. This was caused by some updates to the board behind the scenes. Please excuse the inconvenience.
Nov 1 2009 - Out of the FOG is celebrating 2 years in bringing information and support to family members and loved-ones of people who suffer from personality disorders. In the two years since we launched, our traffic has grown exponentially and we are rapidly becoming one of the internet's premier sources of information on coping with personality disorders. Happy birthday OOTF and thanks to all our members and supporters around the world.
Out of the FOG Support Forum Zetaboards Upgrade
June 15 2009 - Please excuse our appearance while the Out of the FOG Support Forum upgrades to run on the new Zetaboards software platform. The new software contains a number of new features and improvements over our existing system which should become evident after the conversion is completed.
This upgrade will convert all our existing forums, posts, PM's, memberships and profiles. There should be very little interruption in service or loss of data. The only thing you will notice is changes to the appearance of the graphical interface. It will take 1-2 weeks to complete the conversion.
Our main Out of the FOG information site, here at http://www.outofthefogsite.com will be unaffected by the upgrade. Bookmark this site and visit here if you have any trouble logging into the board. Should any unexpected interruption in our service occur, an announcement will be posted in the "Latest News" Box at at http://www.outofthefogsite.com. Additionally, a temporary discussion forum has been established here which you can use should we experience any long-term interruption of service.
Please excuse any inconvenience you may experience as we perform the upgrade.
June 3 2009 - BPD author A.J. Mahari has launched a new version of her website called BPD INFO which has a section which invites members to submit website articles about BPD. Our own gary submitted an article to her site this week.
